


Now Hear This, By Katy Perry

by jazzfic



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Gen, Saturnalia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-05
Updated: 2012-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-28 23:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/313392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After denying Wil Wheaton the chance to see the lost twenty-one seconds of <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>, Sheldon takes the battle to the last place his nemesis is likely to find him. Which is also the most obvious; but no matter, he’s got leadership and the courage of war on his side. And Bernadette has Nicholas Sparks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Hear This, By Katy Perry

**Author's Note:**

> Saturnalia gift for elffriend26. Many thanks to muir_wolf for the beta.

Fight or flight. This is the instinct of deer, of horses, hoofed mammals that flock and take safety in numbers; to sniff on the wind the scent of something lone and cunning; to freeze in one moment, and in the next turn, break, and run. And it’s easy, so easy to do, if you happened to have grown up with the chant of nine-year-old boys with baseball bats all wild on your heels.

Which, fortunately, or unfortunately in this case, Sheldon has.

Wheaton, the lone wolf. Except he’s not alone. He’s fuelled by rage and the hunger for twenty-one seconds of a Spielberg classic.

Sheldon dodges a trashcan, and, as he turns on the speed, feels maybe a tiny jab of sympathy for his nemesis’s plight. After all, the stakes are high; this is the great Indiana Jones that he’s stolen, and in doing so has denied the mob for his own gain. He tries to imagine himself in Wheaton’s shoes, basking in adoration and attention and able to cut in line and basically ruin what has been a hard-earned experience for everyone else, but when he pictures the smirk on that bearded face the sympathy evaporates to nothing, like a dying star taking its last breath before cosmic death.

Dark alleys whistle by. Sheldon keeps running. He can hear voices, but they’re fading, distorted now by distance. A little ways behind, Leonard, narrowly avoiding a lamppost, knocks into Howard and Raj in a series of moves that would make Gene Kelly proud, if Kelly were blind drunk and attempting to flee a group of angry geek cinephiles. _Cosmic death?_ Sheldon thinks, making a face of quiet disgust. He’s almost certain that wild ponies chased by hungry wolves—even those drawn by the hand of Walt Disney when he was best buddies with Salvador Dali, and going through his artistically rich, if slightly strange surrealist phase—never waxed with such poetic abandon.

 

 

By the time they reach North Los Robles, Raj is missing his sweater vest, Howard a shoe, and the remaining air in Sheldon’s lungs has decided to take a vacation to Canada.

“Are they...” Sheldon coughs explosively. “Are they gone?” he manages to pant.

Leonard, bent at the knees and wheezing, glares fiercely at Sheldon from behind slightly fogged lenses.

“They were gone six blocks back. Six blocks, four angry dogs, and a bright and welcoming 7-Eleven. Sheldon, you _wouldn’t stop_.”

Some of the air forgets its luggage and makes a welcome return. He breathes in deeply. In the safe, luminous surrounds of the lobby, with its chipped floor and friendly, reassuringly inoperable elevator, Sheldon surveys the rag-tag group gazing at him with wild hair and flushed faces, and feels some of his superiority re-emerge. They made it. They defied the lone wolf.

“Now, Leonard,” he tuts, placing a foot on the first step, back straight and chest puffed with the happy thought of four flights in which to savor this victory. “Is it really your place to question the leader when he has shown you through the gully of defeat, unscathed and proud, back to mission HQ?”

“Are you kidding?” Howard waves his hands toward the door. “This is the first place they’re going to come looking, Commander Clutz! You’ve led us from the gully of defeat straight into the forest of death, and that big old oak with the poison acorns is going to pelt us with Milk Duds!”

Raj makes a face. “The forest of...death?”

“Oh, sue me for unoriginality in the face of impending doom. You try coming up with clichéd names for places that don’t sound like a wiki entry from some young adult novel that’s trying to be the next Narnia, when _he’s_ acting all smug and superior after nearly getting us trampled.”

Leonard peers outside. “So what do we do?”

“What you do is you follow your leader,” says Sheldon in his most commanding tone, from the top of the stairs. “And hope to God that he doesn’t court marshal you.”

“I don’t get it,” says Raj, bringing up the rear as they trudge up in single file. “Is this still _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ , or have we moved into Oliver Stone territory? And if we have, which one of us is Charlie Sheen?”

 

 

When the door to 4B opens, the first thing to emerge is not Penny’s face but a half-empty wine bottle. Sheldon, hand poised on the last of his three knocks, steps backward into Leonard with all the grace of a water-hosed cat.

“Ow, Sheldon!”

“Maybe we should rethink this strategy...”

Leonard shoves him hard. Sheldon stumbles across the threshold.

Into a cloud of nerve gas.

He hacks and splutters, and crashes, eyes closed, into Penny’s couch. “We’re under attack, men!” he manages to cry. “Run! Save yourselves before it’s too late—“

He can hear Raj sniffing the air, and then a pause as he presumably whispers into Howard’s ear.

“Is that _Purr_ ,” Howard repeats, “by Katy Perry?”

Penny closes the door, puts down the wine bottle, and grabs Sheldon by the elbow. “Okay, Amy,” she says. “I think that’s enough. You’re going to blind someone.”

Sheldon wobbles unsteadily, and blinks several times. Penny’s hand is gripping him with the alarming strength of a Doberman. Or a robot.

Amy shrugs gamely, smiling at Raj. “Yes, it is.”

More whispering, followed by the sound of Howard sighing. “It’s pretty,” he says, robotically.

“It’s pretty _artificiality_ ,” Amy clarifies. “Practically requisite at a sleepover party. Would either of you care for a drink?”

“God, yes.”

The world slowly comes into focus. Sheldon looks around. There are eight pillows on Penny’s couch, and three comforters. Five wine glasses on the coffee table and what looks to be a half-ravaged plate of chocolate cookies. The kitchen counter is piled with boxes. Cheetos and cereal.

“I was unaware that a tornado was approaching,” he says to no one in particular. “Are you stocking up for a hard winter?”

Penny drops her hand. He can feel the afterheat of her fingers. “No, sweetie.”

“Then why is Bernadette crying?”

“They were so _in love_ ,” Bernadette chokes out from beneath a cushion. She wipes her eyes with a ragged tissue. “And he went to medical school to prove people wrong, and to make amends with her father. Because he loved her.”

Sheldon tries to process this. Something loops in his head, mostly in the wrong direction. “Who?” he asks, eventually.

“ _Landon_.”

He stares back blankly.

“Wh—” he gets out, when Penny says, loudly, “It’s a movie, Sheldon. Don’t worry about it.”

She pokes him in the side. Sheldon sighs and steps away from the couch. The brief moment of annoyance at being both touched physically and distracted mentally by yet another outlet of romantic banality that on second glance at Penny’s television appears to be cut of the same cloth as that dire _Lake House_ , brings him with thankful clarity back to the situation at hand. Ignoring Bernadette’s tears, Penny’s slight grin, and the cloud of objectionably fragrant vapour molecules still clinging to his upper body, Sheldon draws himself up to all of his six foot two inches, and addresses the room.

“Members of my own platoon, and the impromptu pajama-clad battalion that has apparently occupied this apartment.” He places his hands at the small of his back and begins pacing, long, even strides serving as a lone, snare drum beat to his words. “Now hear this. There is a scent in the air. And while I don’t pretend for one moment to know who Katy Perry is, I can undoubtedly confirm that this scent is _not_ of her making, but rather of one Wil Wheaton: a man, who, unable to accept defeat when handed to him in one glorious moment of rebellion, fleet as we are of both foot and mind, is _as we speak_ scouring the streets of Pasadena, his army of faceless goons searching high and low for those cunning animals of flight who have managed to outrun him. But he will not win. He will _not_ win, I say, because we have the advantage...the great advantage of...of—Leonard, what are you doing?”

“Looking for your off-switch.”

At this point, several things happen at once. From the kitchen comes the dull pop of a wine bottle being evacuated of its cork. On the couch, Bernadette blows her nose, blubs, “Oh, Jamie. Why couldn’t you _live?_ ” And Sheldon, frustration threatening to boil over at being interrupted mid-speech, spins on the spot to find his roommate with a glass in one hand and a red vine in the other, staring back as if to challenge.

“This,” Sheldon grits out between clenched teeth. “This is insubordination.”

Leonard sighs.

“No, Sheldon, buddy, Commander Clutz or whoever you are,” he says tiredly. “This is quiet time. No more running time.”

And with that Leonard drifts away to join Howard and Bernadette. Sheldon, composure bruised, deflates a couple of inches and gazes hopelessly across the room. Ridiculous! The heavy burden he has given over to protect less than a minute of never before seen fedora hat and bullwhip; to shield a blurry, dark cutaway shot of the great Henry Jones Jr from the undeserving eyes of Wil Wheaton—is he to give up all that and merely lay down in defence when there is still a chance of everything coming to blows? Apparently so.

“I take one risk in battle and _this_ is what I am rewarded with. Well, if anyone is searching for their erstwhile leader,” he informs the general space and those within who are still listening, which in this case appears to be no one but the set-against-a-permanent-sunset characters of Bernadette’s movie, and a pink care bear, “you may find him in the bathroom of this ridiculous command post, swapping stratagems with a flotilla of non-existent adhesive ducks.”

 

 

As it turns out there are no ducks in Penny’s bathroom, but there are candles. Small floating candles in the basin, and Sheldon stares at them with a feeling of quiet lethargy. His moment of bravery had been nourished by adrenaline, the splash of puddles and flashing memory of some great adversary nipping at his heels, the same feeling at age nine as a month shy of thirty—but now, shut away in Penny’s bathroom with nothing but his...well, his reflection, to reflect upon, he suddenly wants nothing more than to shower, put on his Saturday pajamas and climb under the covers. To stare at a goldfish who mightn’t understand the work involved in dealing with your average arch-nemesis, but will shine faithfully, and always. Circling its little goldfish way in a circle of contentment. Miles away from Wolowitz’s forest of death.

A happier place altogether, if he could only wash his hands and get there.

Oh, these candles! Sheldon sighs and waves ineffectively at them. They bob in the water, teasingly, ignoring him. He wasn’t wrong about there being a flotilla, even if it is jasmine scented, and not at all Armada like.

Koothrappali was right—he’s mixing his parables like oil and vinegar. Time to take a stand.

Sheldon turns for the door, and is about to call out Penny’s name and demand she take some responsibility for this fire hazard left unsupervised and surrounded by inflammable and very fluffy towels, when a clatter of noise and the muffled shout of raised voices in the living room make him freeze in his tracks.

And then there is a scuffling at the door.

“ _Sheldon!_ ”

The hiss belongs to Penny. Sheldon frowns and gazes down at the handle. He thinks about turning the lock, and even has his hand poised to do so, when she says his name again and the door opens a crack.

“Penny,” Sheldon says petulantly, staring back. He can see her eyes. Her cheeks are flushed. “You can’t just barge in here! What if I’d been in a state of undress? It would be most improper.”

“Oh, don’t be so prissy.” Penny scoots inside and closes the door quickly. She hunches slightly and plants one ear against it. “Now _shush_.”

Sheldon bends as well, frowning. Actually, now he thinks about it, that most raised of all the raised voices emitting from the living room sounds mighty familiar... “Why should I shush? I demand to know what is going—”

But before he can finish he finds a hand clamped over his mouth. His eyes widen and he splutters against her. She smells, and tastes, of honey puffs. The oddity of this centers briefly in his head before real reaction kicks in and he jerks back. Penny takes her hand away and glares at him.

“We’ve got _company_ , is what’s going on.”

Familiar as a predator’s wild cry, sheltered and savage. As panic begins to bubble inside, his mind wanders, just for a nanosecond, back to the poetic musings that had fuelled his mad dash. Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear ohdearohdear—

“COOPER!”

“Oh, dear Lord.” As if to punctuate the moment, Sheldon’s heart, quite without any permission, decides to embark on a three-minute mile run through his ribcage and down through his esophagus. He stares at Penny, wide-eyed, unable to speak.

And one of the candles flickers out.

 

 

Trapped.

Sheldon buries his head in his hands, and groans.

Trapped and doomed to live out his days in a bathroom with a fluffy mat and rainbow-colored loofah hanging off a peg in a shower, a shower with a deathtrap surface devoid of anything adhesive, or rational, or sensible, or—

“Honey, you look kind of pale. Maybe you should, um...stand by the toilet.”

Sheldon wobbles as he is bid, sitting on the closed seat. He wonders briefly if maybe he should clean it; that a distraction might be a prudent move if he is to conserve energy and the control of his wits. “Who let him in?” he asks. “If it was Leonard then he’s going to find himself at the raw end of approximately ninety-seven separate charges of the Cooper-Geneva Convention...and I can guarantee,“ Sheldon jabs an angry finger to the wall and the vague direction of his own apartment, “that _unlike last time_ , there will be no tricks involving mysterious runaway juries instigated by that Wolowitz—”

“For God’s sake! Would you calm down?” Penny takes a steadying breath and leans a hip against the basin. “It was Amy, okay? She got the story out of Raj somehow—I think there was wine involved—and then became all obsessed with this entire thing you have going on with Wil Wheaton. And then someone knocked on the door, and, I don’t know, it was one of those guys from your comic book store, and Raj is looking though and is all ‘hey, it’s suchandsuch!’, and then Bernadette is all ‘who?’, and Leonard is all ‘NO!’, but Amy opens the door. Amy, okay?” Rant over, she stops waving her hands about and folds them with a sigh. “So, now they’re all...out there. And you’re in here. And I’m in here and _why_ , I don’t know. You’re grown men. What do you think he’s going to do to you?”

Sheldon looks at his fingers, twined together. He can’t feel his thumbs.

“I need to wash my hands,” he says, quietly, thinking that his voice sounds very far away, and strange, and not at all like himself. “I need to wash my hands, Penny, but there are candles in the basin.” He looks up at her. “As to your query, well. Wil Wheaton cut in line, I retaliated, I ran away, and if I were him I’d want to...destroy me.”

He stands up, tall and shoulders square, with the bearing of a man condemned. Accepting of his fate.

There’s a strange expression on Penny’s face, one he can’t quite read but wonders if he’s seen before, late at night, during a darkened rendition of a song of cats and sleep. Instead of speaking she picks a handtowel from one of the disorganized towers, and she takes him by the elbow—no Doberman this time, Sheldon thinks, but maybe a friendly robot—and opens the bathroom door.

 

 

“There he is! I knew it! You can’t hide forever, Sheldon. I’ve got about two hundred angry _Raiders_ aficionados ready to skin you for the rat bastard you are—“

“Oh, go fish in a pond,” snaps Penny, leading Sheldon past the crowd of angry eyes and accusing faces. “It’s twenty-one seconds of your life. I could kiss this so-called rat bastard of yours for longer, right smack on the lips, which I bet would be a whole lot more than any of you would ever get.”

Silence. Blessed, remarkable silence. Silence like the crackling of twigs in the forest as a deer, white and blooded, disappears into cover, to safety.

And out of the corner of one dazed eye, as he follows Penny and her pajama pants with the lacy edges out into the corridor, and as he listens to the confused murmuring behind him, Sheldon is almost certain that he saw the lone wolf smile.

 

 

“So,” says Raj, reaching for his wineglass and remote, as Wil sits on the couch, resigned and quiet, next to the now snoring Bernadette. “ _A Walk To Remember._ Who’s up for a rewatch?”


End file.
